By Rocky Mountain Voice Editorial Board
The fifth installment of RMV’s COvid Chronicles covers the strangest stretch yet—when deaths dipped, testing peaked, and the state quietly admitted not every COVID death was what they claimed. The contradictions were harder to hide, the public wasn’t playing along, and the illusion was cracking. Yes, these installments are longer than our usual coverage. So was the list of lies. We’re not about to shrink the story.
More than two months into government-mandated shutdowns, Coloradans had lost patience—and begun reclaiming their fearlessness. After surrendering jobs, shuttering schools, isolating loved ones, and forfeiting springtime rites of faith and family, many started asking the obvious: What was all this really for?
Yes, people had gotten sick. Yes, some deaths occurred. But the fear campaign pushed by Gov. Jared Polis, unelected bureaucrats, and a compliant media no longer matched what Coloradans saw with their own eyes.
The warm May sun only strengthened their resolve. As COVID numbers flatlined and trust in “death counts” crumbled, clear-eyed citizens began asking hard questions—and the answers were ugly. Behind the briefings and sanitized soundbites, the state was quietly reclassifying deaths, inflating the data, and overriding doctors who dared to dissent.
These are the COvid Chronicles for May 16-23, 2020…
COvid Chronicles catch-up
• Introducing The COvid Chronicles: How fear and force reshaped Colorado
• COvid Chronicles April 1-15, 2020: Fifteen days that changed Colorado forever
• COvid Chronicles April 16-30, 2020: From tattletales to tyranny
• The COvid Chronicles May 1–7, 2020: Seven days that set the stage for open rebellion
• The COvid Chronicles May 8–15, 2020: C&C made headlines. Polis made an example. Colorado made up its mind.
May 16
Two months into Colorado’s frenetic COVID response, a growing number of Coloradans—especially those still willing to think critically—had begun to suspect what they weren’t supposed to say out loud: that the numbers being peddled by government officials as gospel might not be so ironclad after all.
Nowhere was this clearer than in the state’s COVID-19 death tally. After pressure from coroners, physicians, and elderly-care workers, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) quietly admitted what many had suspected—the death count included cases where the virus wasn’t the actual cause of death listed on the certificate.
To save face, CDPHE began publishing two separate death counts. One, nearing 1,200 at the time, included anyone who had tested positive for COVID at the time of death, regardless of what actually caused it. The second, lower figure—878—counted only those deaths the state deemed to be due to the virus.
But even that second number was under fire. From the Front Range to the Western Slope, professionals who cared for the sick, buried the dead, and actually reviewed the medical facts came forward with stories of state officials steamrolling their expertise. The public clarification only came after Roxborough Park Republican Rep. Mark Baisley raised alarm over a troubling death classification at an Arapahoe County nursing home.
“For a state agency to come in and start reclassifying causes of death is unusual and kind of disturbs a whole lot of people,” Baisley said.
Over in Montezuma County, Coroner George Deavers told 9News he was alarmed to find the state had counted as a COVID death a fatality he ruled was clearly caused by alcohol poisoning. The man’s blood-alcohol level was 550 milligrams—more than enough to be lethal on its own.
“I feel the state was wrong,” said Montezuma County Coroner George Deavers, pushing back against CDPHE’s decision to count a fatal alcohol poisoning as a COVID death. “If it’s a COVID death, it needs to be reported as a COVID death. If it’s not a COVID death, it doesn’t need to be reported as a COVID death. I’m not trying to pad the deaths one way or another.”
La Plata County saw a similar overstep. As reported by the Denver Post’s Jessica Seaman, Coroner Jann Smith determined that a local resident died of heart complications—testing negative for COVID at the time of death, though they’d tested positive weeks earlier. CDPHE still classified it as a COVID fatality, overruling Smith’s judgment.
Seaman also reported that staff at a Centennial retirement community were blindsided when the state declared several deaths as COVID-related, contradicting the facility’s own medical staff. In a move virtually unheard of, the health department “overrode,” as executive director Tim Rogers put it, the conclusions of attending physicians.
“We have never seen a situation where the health department overrules a physician’s findings,” Rogers said. He added that the state never explained why it changed the death classifications.
While the redefinition of death played out quietly behind closed doors, the reeducation of the living ramped up. In Denver, Mayor Michael Hancock’s mask mandate for stores entered its first week—but even with 50 reported cases of noncompliance, not a single ticket was issued.
“Officers are still trying to gain compliance through education,” said Heather Burke, spokeswoman for the city’s Joint Information Center.
But elsewhere in Colorado, the state’s heavy hand came down harder. Just ask then-congressional candidate Lauren Boebert. After opening Shooters Grill in Rifle for indoor dining, defying the state’s order to allow only takeout and delivery, Boebert had her restaurant license suspended by Garfield County.
May 17
Despite the fact that COVID hospitalizations in Colorado had dipped to 486—the lowest mark since late March—U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse took to the pages of the Denver Post with Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips to sound the election alarm. Their plea? Vote by mail… six months early.
“The 2020 election will be unlike any in living memory,” Neguse wrote. “That is why we must take immediate steps to ensure a safe and secure election this November, and the most logical solution is through the expanded use of mail ballots.”
With the virus’s so-called “first wave” already losing its grip, the powers-that-be were desperate to keep COVID complications front and center—even if it meant stretching logic to absurd lengths. Case in point: wildfire response.
In Durango, Herald reporter Jonathan Romeo warned that efforts to fight wildfires—yes, actual burning forests threatening homes—could be disrupted by COVID safety protocols. Social distancing, Romeo wrote, might keep firefighters from working side by side, digging fire lines, sharing meals, or sleeping in group encampments.
“So how, exactly, are emergency personnel going to navigate this harrowing juxtaposition,” Romeo asked readers, “should a large wildfire ignite?”
San Juan National Forest fire manager Richard Bustamante spelled it out: “It’s not just everyone in tight quarters looking over a map like it used to be. People are separating.”
You read that right—firefighters risking their lives to stop an inferno might have to pause and ponder six feet of separation. Because the virus might spread.
Makes you wonder what the officials would have them do—or not do—when they actually reached the flames.
May 18
A day after the Denver Post reported that tithes to Trinity United Methodist Church were down 30 percent and staffing at the Archdiocese of Denver had dropped 20 percent—fallout from shuttered sanctuaries while pot shops and liquor stores stayed open—the Gazette’s front page told the story of Colorado’s pandemic-era piety: masked, distanced, and government-approved.
The photo showed aunt and niece Lillie Hattman and Anna Akins in their Sunday best, attending mass at St. Mary Cathedral in downtown Colorado Springs. It was the first in-person service permitted since Gov. Polis began policing the pews. The toddler flipped through a picture book in her white dress while sitting apart from her family—masked, reserved, and rule-bound.
According to Gazette reporter Jerilee Bennet, Polis’s updated edict allowed a maximum of 70 attendees at the cathedral, but only with reserved seating in socially distanced pews. The priest asked the unmasked not to sing, and when it was over, parishioners were instructed to wipe down the seats where they’d worshiped.
Meanwhile, with case counts dropping, Denver officials finally summoned the courage to ask the state—pretty please—if they might reopen outdoor spaces like the Denver Zoo and Botanic Gardens. The city’s request, naturally, came with all the required caveats: masks, reservations only, headcounts, symptom screening, and distancing—all in open air.
But perhaps no example better illustrated the reach of Colorado’s shutdown regime than a case out of Hawaii.
According to the mysteriously named “COVID-19 Joint Information Center,” a 23-year-old Boulder herbalist named Tara Trunfio had violated quarantine orders after arriving in Hawaii without a state-approved exemption. She was arrested, faced up to a year in jail, and a $5,000 fine—all for daring to travel without being deemed “essential.”
“I just want to farm, heal the Earth and do good things,” Trunfio told the Denver Post from a hospital room in Hawaii, where she was awaiting COVID test results (which turned out negative).
Adding insult to irony, Trunfio provided the Post with screenshots showing she’d emailed the state’s quarantine hotline on May 5—emails that were never answered. But when the press came calling, state officials suddenly found time to respond—not to her, but to the journalists.
“Even if Ms. Trunfio ‘intending’ to be a herbalist qualified her as a critical infrastructure worker, which it does not,” the state’s statement read, “that would only allow her to leave her designated quarantine location to perform her critical infrastructure work.”
In other words: Stay in your box. Even if it’s 3,300 miles from home.
May 19
As the Front Range flirted with, and in some places shattered, all-time heat records, Coloradans did the unthinkable—they went outside. Some even took a dip.
In Boulder, where the Boulder Daily Camera’s Charlie Brennan observed that “any notion of social distancing had seemingly washed well downstream with the rest of the spring runoff,” the scene was too much for some to handle. Hundreds of college students and young people flocked to Boulder Creek, basking in the sun and frolicking in the shadows of the Flatirons—until the tattling began.
Boulder County Public Health was quickly flooded—not by runoff, but by complaints from fellow Boulderites who couldn’t bear the sight of carefree youth behaving like… people.
“We can quickly lose all that we’ve gained—we may have already,” warned spokesperson Chana Goussetis, wagging her finger at the CU crowd.
Despite the outrage, no citations were issued. Technically, those riverside rebels could have faced fines of up to $1,000 and a year in jail for daring to gather in groups that clearly exceeded Gov. Polis’s outdoor limit of ten.
Goussetis’s boss, Public Health Executive Director Jeff Zayach, went further, accusing the young adults of putting “our whole community, our businesses, and our economy at risk” by exercising—gasp—their constitutionally protected free will.
“Please remember that it takes up to 14 days before we see who will become sick and spread the disease from this large gathering of people along the creek,” Zayach warned.
Sunshine, social interaction, and personal liberty? Not on Boulder’s watch.
May 20
As restaurateurs across Colorado—especially in places like Castle Rock and Rifle—reeled from the heavy hand of Gov. Polis’s shutdown enforcers revoking their business licenses, the state health department unveiled its initial draft of what would be required to reopen.
The proposed COVID-era restaurant rules included the now-familiar mandates: masks, distancing, and capacity limits. But they didn’t stop there.
Restaurants were told to cap party sizes at six “based on science”—yes, that was the phrase used. They could serve alcohol at the bar but not food, had to shut down by 10 p.m. sharp, and were even advised to modify their menus to “create additional space in the kitchen and promote social distancing.”
If the creeping control over restaurants wasn’t enough to concern liberty-minded Coloradans, a Denver Post report by Shelly Bradbury revealed something more invasive: law enforcement agencies in at least seven counties—Denver, Boulder, El Paso, Adams, Douglas, Arapahoe, and Jefferson—had been given lists of COVID-positive addresses. The idea? So 911 dispatchers could warn officers and first responders before they showed up.
Mark Silverstein, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado, called it what it was: “a pointless invasion of privacy.”
But not to worry, the Tri-County Health Department assured residents in Adams, Arapahoe, and Douglas counties. They weren’t sending names—just addresses. And only via encrypted daily emails. That comforting clarification clashed with an Associated Press report identifying Colorado as one of just 10 states that were, in fact, sharing names with dispatch centers.
“When people go in for a medical test or procedure,” Silverstein said, “I think they assume that’s private, confidential information, and if it’s going to be disclosed, it needs to be for a pretty good reason and there need to be guardrails and safeguards around the disclosure.”
May 21
With Coloradans’ desire to return to normal life growing by the day, state officials kept looking for ways to maintain their grip. The print edition of The Gazette on Thursday, May 21, offered a new fear-forward headline—plastered above the fold in bold:
Virus-linked syndrome suspected in kids
The article, by Colorado Politics’ Marianne Goodland and Emily Ferguson, warned of a pediatric illness tied to COVID-19. As Coloradans learned the state had been sharing COVID-positive addresses—and possibly names—with law enforcement, the governor warned the public of something even more chilling: a mysterious pediatric syndrome possibly linked to the virus.
The condition, known as multi-inflammatory syndrome in children, or MISC, was described as “rare” and “mysterious.” Three suspected cases had emerged at Children’s Hospital Colorado. Symptoms included fever, gastrointestinal issues, and inflammation of the heart—typically four weeks after virus exposure.
“Our biggest takeaway is how little we know,” Gov. Polis admitted.
Still, neither Polis nor state epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy provided further details—citing patient privacy.
Polis compared the syndrome’s unknowns to the early 20th-century case of Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary. “There are many Typhoid Marys among us,” he warned, adding that a person could be contagious for up to three weeks without symptoms.
The article noted that the governor’s briefing “came on the same day that a state health official pronounced that Coloradans were still ‘at the beginning’ of the coronavirus pandemic, while rebuffing arguments for fewer rules.”
With a straight face, officials warned of dangerous asymptomatic spread and denied any justification for loosening restrictions—even as public trust, job numbers, and patience all continued to crater.
May 22
As state officials and un-elected bureaucrats showed little eagerness to return to normal, Colorado Department of Labor and Employment statistics illustrated just how bad the state’s labor situation was. At 11.3% unemployed, Colorado registered the highest jobless mark in 44 years as 348,000 jobless workers, up from 184,000 the month prior, meant, as Broomfield economist Gary Horvath put it to the Post, “employment declined by more than the number of wage and salary employees in Wyoming.”
Even worse, the Census Bureau’s Small Business Pulse Survey painted a grim picture for Colorado’s small business community, a sector that comprised 90% of the state’s pre-pandemic economy. The survey said of businesses that stayed open, 40% reported revenue reductions of half or more while 60% said they were struggling to make rent or mortgage payments. The same bureau’s Household Pulse Survey ranked Colorado as the ninth-most affected state in the union with just under half of households surveyed reporting a decline in income since March.
And while the state economy gasped for air, at least the Class of 2020 got to celebrate their commencement with all the pomp and circumstance of a drive-thru Chick-fil-A. In Colorado Springs, teachers stood masked and distanced in parking lots, waving poster boards at passing minivans as though ritual humiliation were part of the curriculum.
One Gazette photo captured the moment: a teacher in sandals and sunglasses, cheering through a cloth mask, clutching a glitter-covered sign that screamed, “You did it, Class of COVID!” Gone were the gowns, the stage walks, the handshakes, and the hugs. In their place—air horns, elbow bumps, and awkward Zoom links.
Welcome to graduation, 2020-style. Brought to you by the same people who told you Grandma couldn’t go to church.
May 23
Saturday’s starkest headline should have been a celebratory one: for the first time since early spring, Colorado reported zero new COVID deaths. And the state’s testing rate reached an all-time high—109.1 tests per 100,000 people, the strongest single-day figure since the pandemic began.
But while the numbers improved, the narrative stayed on script.
Denver Post political reporter Justin Wingerter published a May 23 piece titled: “Colorado Republicans target China for everything from TikTok to COVID.”
Wingerter closed the piece by spotlighting a tweet from Colorado Springs Rep. Doug Lamborn, who joked on April Fool’s Day that COVID-19 stood for “China Originated Virus In December ’19.” Wingerter responded with a final paragraph that can only be described as fact-check theater:
“COVID is an abbreviation for coronavirus disease, and the 19 refers to 2019, the year it was discovered,” Wingerter wrote. “Like Lamborn’s tweet, that is untrue.”
With that hard-hitting journalism squared away, the state turned its attention back to personal data control—just not yours.
Only days after Coloradans learned their COVID-positive addresses (and possibly names) had been shared with law enforcement, Gov. Polis issued a new directive: State agencies were now prohibited from sharing information for civil immigration enforcement purposes.
In an article by Post reporter Saja Hindi (now with The Colorado Trust’s “health equity” team), readers learned that Democratic Sen. Julie Gonzales had been working behind the scenes on just such protections—hoping to keep ICE from using databases like the DMV to locate undocumented immigrants.
“The concern about ICE’s use of state information to deport immigrants,” Hindi wrote, “is more heightened at a time when people are trying to access assistance during a pandemic and economic shutdowns.”
Polis complied. His guidance directed state agencies not to request or release immigration status unless legally required—or authorized by him.
“All should feel welcome to be the recipients of state services without fear of abuse of their privacy or data,” Polis said in the document—almost certainly leaked to the Post by the senator or her legal allies.
A noble sentiment. But for law-abiding Coloradans who just found out their health data was being sent to dispatchers across the state, it raised a fair question: Who, exactly, is the governor protecting?
“There’s a lot of anxiety people are facing,” Sen. Gonzales said earlier that month.
No argument there. Same question to the señadora…